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[removed]

This isn't order vs chaos. This is eating your veggies vs eating babies.

uh, i think its more of a gahleem vs darkhon kind of thing that this prompt is going for

Ever since I was a child, I was told the stories about the atrocities of the Night clan on innocent civilians. I was told about the Seige of Voroshire, where the Night clan enchanted the entire city, denying it of any light, be it from lamps, or even from the Sun. The city endured darkness for 3 months, until their friends were released from the city cells. I heard about the original Demon, the ancestor of all of their kind, who would destroy anything in sight with black holes which would appear by his mere thoughts. Elders told me how the original Angel, our holy father, was the only one who could stand against him.

I was told that they could creep into your shadows and rob you when you would sleep, that they could steal your sense of sight, that they could bring you nightmares when you were asleep. Truly the children of the devil.

------------ 15 years later -------------

I just reflected the laser pillar shot by the village elder onto Charville, another city seized by the Night clan. My mom has the element sand, so somehow I ended up with Mirror magic. I tried to argue with the elder, that this would kill all the civilians, but he dismissed me completely, blabbering something about greater good.

Back to the present moment. He declares me banished from the Morning clan, and shoots a laser though my leg, insulting my mother and calling me an impure halfling.

I fall to the ground, and see another laser in making. In my head, I'm now connecting the dots of all the things I saw, but ignored. The boot licking by our leaders whenever any imperial guests would arrive, extermination of Rhaela on grounds of fraud, after blocking her research on radioactive residuals after light beam spells, and the convenient draught in the water village after they declared a war on us.

When you know you are going to die, a surprising calm takes over you. I look the elder in the eye, smiling. A totalitarian is quite good at spotting the sparkling eyes of a skeptic, of a non-believer. He understands that I am able to see through the propaganda that has been fed to each of our kind since childhood. I cannot just be exiled. I must be eliminated. The beam is fired, but just before that a dark figure appears before me, and it absorbs the laser.

[Part 1/3]

"Hello kid. Good job hanging in there, and also for saving the town.", the person said, "You must be Poiyon. Anyway, time to run."

He jumps on me, and I am just pulled into an absolute darkness. I can feel him holding me, but still kind of scared. I can see football sized blasts of light here and there. Those must be the attacks from other folks, that's why he is making sure to evade them. I didn't know that light magic can penetrate the shadow realm. I pop out from the shadow, somewhere far outside on the other side of Charville, the city under siege.

"Hope the journey wasn't too bad. Can't imagine the husband doing it smoothly."

I hear a familiar voice. "Rhaela! What are you doing here?" I say, with tears in my eyes, "I thought they killed you."

"I'm not that easy to kill Poiyon", winks Rhaela. She had been like my elder sister. She used to live next door and taught me all sorts of things.

"Eheh I'm trying to improve.", says the Night clan guy, "Sorry for the long journey pal. The thing is, if I take anyone inside the shadow realm, who doesn't know dark magic, I can bring them back only by exiting from the shadow of a Morning clan person. Anyway nice to meet you, I'm Shiva."

"Hello Shiva, thank you for saving me back there. I'm so sorry for taking you guys to be evil.", I say, "Looks like our clan is the evil one. I have just been fed lies, all my life."

"All the clans are grey, pal.", Shiva says, "And my clan is also not totally guilt free. They are laying a siege on this city after all. All these clan heads are powerful wizards and they are all extremely dangerous."

"Charville is a city of ordinary non-mages. They use coal for energy, and have recently started utilizing steam to build these complex machines, which don't require any magic. I don't know how they do it, but they call it science.", says Shiva, "I'm almost convinced that there is a collaboration between our clan heads to eliminate this technological advancement, as it has the potential to topple the warm chairs on which these people have been sitting for hundreds of years."

"Enough talking. Ponyon's wound is bleeding. Let me heal you." Rhaela says. She starts the healing light magic on my leg.

"It's okay, more importantly we need to evacuate the citizens!", I say, "The unit there might obliterate the city at any moment!"

"Oh don't worry about that. We have already evacuated the citizens." Says Rhaela.

Suddenly I feel some tiny hands on my hair. I look up and and see a floating baby, maybe 2-3 years old. And then he just vanishes, and appears in front of Rhaela.

[Part 2/3]

"Mama, who's he?" he says to her, pointing towards me.

"He is Poiyon, Luna. He's my friend. Be good to him okay?"

The baby just looks at me excitedly, and vanishes. And then reappears in front of me.

"Hello Pon.... Pon. I helped Mama and papa. In zippizapping people.", says the baby, "I am a good boy. Will you be my friend?". He just vanishes and reappears here and there while talking.

"We think he is able to teleport by somehow creating a combination of black hole and white hole.", Shiva says, "Combination of light and dark magic, you see. He calls it zippizapping. Or it might just be another magic altogether."

"That's very interesting!" I say, "But how does he float though?"

"That I am not sure. Never studied that much magic.", Says Shiva, as he catches his playing child. "How do you do that huh?"

The baby is just looking at his dad, initially confused and then just forgot the question. Didn't understand it, so didn't answer it. He is now just playing with his dad's face.

"Maybe those science folks could be able to answer it.", I speak to myself.

[Part 3/3]

"The dark? Evil hides in the Dark. Light allows everyone to see who you are, what you do."

"The dark? The dark is where you go to be safe. To hide from the monsters with power. The can't see where you are... in the dark under your blankets."

"The Light? The light will burn infections from your wounds, scour out impurities. The light can heal."

"Heal? All that the Light does is burn. Sure, you can target the infections, and that's good... but if you really want to heal after that, then just relax, sleep in a safe, Dark place."

"The Light will burn the evil from the world."

"The Dark will give the good a quiet place to grow."

People always talk about balance. Long time ago, I too beard it. One must balance both sides of their being in order to have a fulfilling life, as lacking compassion will turn you into a monster; and acting only on it will make you self terminate.

The same is in each plane. After she left me from her daily annoyance in my registry; I pondered again the notions.

Too much darkness, or vileness, was dangerous... In a plane which only wretchedness was the way to live, the heavens themselves went and laid waste the whole existence, to start anew. There was no movement, no way to balance that reality.

But, too much goodness or light as many tend to speak, is equally bad... Not only because there was no flux of energy, but of what entails...

You see, Heaven isn't a place... It is not a plane...

It is a creature... And each plane is it's food...

It is also true that each soul consumed is turned into an angel... But it is the same consolation as the meat of a creature is turned into the cells of its predator.

Nihilo... Save us...